Trump signs order to get feds out of K-12 education

The end of government overreach is nigh after Trump signed an executive order to reduce the federal government’s role in education. (Photo via AP)

The end of big government interfering with our children’s education is nigh.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to pull the federal government out of K-12 education and return control to state and local officials.

The order, titled “Education Federalism Executive Order,” will give Education Secretary Betsy DeVos 300 days to review, modify, and repeal Obama-era regulations and guidance that she can deem as government overreach.

The President said that he’s proud to reduce the role of the federal government in education to give parents, in particular, the power to make the best decisions for their children.

“For too long, the federal government has imposed its will on state and local governments,” Trump said during the order’s signing. “The result has been education that spends more and achieves far, far, far less. My administration has been working to reverse this federal power grab and give power back to families, cities, states. Give power back to localities.”

Trump is relying heavily on DeVos to clean up the mess that the Obama administration left.

“Time and time again, we’ve seen that one-size-fits-all policies and mandates from Washington simply don’t work,” DeVos said. “We can’t have a cookie-cutter approach to education. Each state and each school have different challenges, and each individual student has unique needs.”

She continued. “Our solutions should be as varied as the students we serve. The Every Student Succeeds Act was a good step in this direction, giving flexibility to states to best meet the needs of their communities. We’re going to implement this law as Congress intended, not how the previous administration dictated. When we give decision-making power back to states and communities, students benefit. This executive order puts us on that track.”

The Every Student Succeeds Act was passed in the Republican controlled House and Senate in 2015, and replaced the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law. The bill was signed into law by President Barack Obama and shifted the federal accountability provisions to the states, even though it retained NCLB’s standardized testing requirements.

This executive order fulfills Trump’s campaign promise in which if the Education Department could not be eliminated, its role could at least be reduced and education could be run locally. While it wasn’t part of his campaign slogan, Trump is doing his part to make America smart again.